Themes
by Argenteus Draco
Summary: Fifty sentences outlining the centuries-spanning life of Jedi Master Yoda.


**Author's Note:** Inspired in part by **Mathematica** for pointing us toward the theme lists, and partly by **skywalker05** and **wordswithout** for agreeing to take up the challenge with me.

* * *

_**i. Walking**_

It is a source of pride to him that, after 800 years, he can still walk, and it is a display of humility that he does so assisted by a cane.

_**ii. Waltz**_

The delicate dance of moons revolving around planets revolving around suns and black holes and stars leaves him in childlike wonderment each time he encounters it, because he has lived long enough to witness the subtle changes in it's rhythm.

_**iii. Wishes**_

If only there could have been more Masters, so that children did not leave the Order for lack of one.

_**iv. Wonder**_

Luke tells him about the destruction of Alderaan on the third evening after arriving, and he cannot help but wonder how many potential Jedi were lost there before they could be found.

_**v. Worry**_

It was always important that he not focus on his own concerns; he needed to keep a clear mind when others came to him with theirs.

_**vi. Whimsy**_

He knows that the Initiates need discipline, but he also recognizes their need for the occasional jokes, and it's good for the Jedi at whose expense they are often made; someone must remind them that they were once children too.

_**vii. Waste/Wasteland**_

The gravity of what has happened to the Order does not hit him fully until they reach Coruscant; the Temple that generations of Jedi have called home is devoid of all life, a barren desert in the middle of an urban jungle.

_**viii. Whiskey and Rum**_

The wine that the politicians drink smells as cheap as their promises.

_**ix. War**_

The clones mean change, to him, more than anything else; change for the Republic, for the Order, and for the generation which will now grow up at war.

_**x. Weddings**_

Although he has never known whatever happiness Ki-Adi-Mundi must feel with his wives, he supposes he can relate to the feeling of pride that his former student's father must feel as he looks on at the wedding.

_**xi. Birthday**_

The measure of his life, he realizes, is dictated not by weeks, months, years, but by the periods of peace, prosperity, war, exile, rebellion that he has lived to see.

_**xii. Blessing**_

If Luke had worn a Padawan braid, this would have been the moment when he had the boy kneel before him to have it cut.

_**xiii. Bias**_

A part of him always sees Dooku as a gawky teenaged boy, still unsure of his growing body and command of the Force; even on Geonosis, he does not want to reconcile the two people in his mind.

_**xiv. Burning**_

Dooku had been his greatest pupil, and Dooku had taught Qui-Gon, who had taught Obi-Wan Kenobi; in the moment that Kenobi took the torch to light the pyre, he thought he briefly saw the collective wisdom of generations reflected in the young man's eyes.

_**xv. Breathing**_

The first time he hears the automated inhale-exhale in his meditation, he knows that Obi-Wan could not find the strength to kill Vader; now the task will fall to the boy.

_**xvi. Breaking**_

The first wave of deaths hits him with what feels like enough force to fell the ancient wroshyr trees around him, and those subsequent like falling branches shattering on the distant forest floor.

_**xvii. Belief**_

"He will bring balance;" _Yes, my Padawan's Padawan, but did you know what balance truly meant?_

_**xviii. Balloon**_

As he leaves the physical shell of his body behind, he feels himself swell, reaching into all the corners of the galaxy, joining hands with those who came before him, and reaching out his own for the one who will come next.

_**xix. Balcony**_

He looks out over the battalions of clones, and thinks it strange that he will potentially lead these men into battle, and stranger still that he should be the one to name the war.

_**xx. Bane**_

When he had been a student, his Masters had worried that the Rule of Two followed by the Sith would not last, and that the Order would one day re-emerge; years with no news have made the Jedi complacent, as even he, who was not so far removed from a time when the Sith were as numerous as the Jedi, forgets that a Master and Apprentice still lurk in the shadows.

_**xxi. Quiet**_

Perhaps he should have been more wary of the lull that followed the Battle of Coruscant; the calm before the storm.

_**xxii. Quirks**_

The Knights and Masters know him as wisdom personified, as a solemn expression of reality, but the children only know him as the teacher whose smile makes his ears twitch.

_**xxiii. Question**_

Sometimes he questions what they could have done differently, but he never finds any answer.

_**xxiv. Quarrel**_

They have disagreed before, have politely debated politics and the Jedi Code, until the petty arguments finally culminate at Geonosis; there is never any resolution.

_**xxv. Quitting**_

There are days when he considers letting go, but despite the increasing difficulty with which he moves, he knows that he cannot quit before the boy returns.

_**xxvi. Jump**_

Ataru is the most acrobatic of the seven forms of lightsaber combat, and he has become a true master of it's maneuvers where a larger, heavier being could not.

_**xxvii. Jester**_

He plays the fool when he first meets Luke Skywalker as a test of the boy's character, to see if he is as quick to judgment as his father before him, as vulnerable to preconceptions, and as sure of himself and his skills.

_**xxviii. Jousting**_

The sound of practice weapons striking targets rings throughout the training salle, Initiates of varying ages vying against each other to prove themselves worthy of apprenticeship; a few look at him with unbridled hope in their large eyes, but he turns away from them.

_**xxix. Jewel**_

Chosen One or not, even he cannot deny that Anakin Skywalker shines as brightly in the Force as any diamond, from the moment he first enters the council chamber as a child to the final time he leaves it.

_**xxx. Just**_

He mourns privately for Dooku; _at least he died a warrior's death, and the burning ship afforded him some semblance of a pyre._

_**xxxi. Smirk**_

Even before he learns Palpatine's true identity, there is something about the politician's expression that unsettles him.

_**xxxii. Sorrow**_

He knows that he should _feel_ in the aftermath of the Jedi Purge, but perhaps it is a lifetime spent in constant training, or a shear volume of Jedi lost -- teachers, students, children -- that it bars him from what should have been overwhelming grief.

_**xxxiii. Stupidity**_

If he had been younger, he might have rushed to engage Sidious in battle again.

_**xxxiv. Serenade**_

He sits in the heart of Dagobah's swamp-forests and listens to the wind in the trees, the flap of a distant bogwing, the slide of a sleen moving through the leaf litter, the constant rain pattering the ground; the voice of the Force.

_**xxxv. Sarcasm**_

How ironic, he thinks, that he should be honored by the construction of a statue more than thirty times his size.

_**xxxvi. Sordid**_

The holographic images make him cringe inwardly, not so much for their content (it is not the first time he has seen the deaths of children) but for the brisk, methodical way in which the murders were carried out.

_**xxxvii. Soliloquy**_

Though the words never change, each newly knighted Padawan speaks the oath in a uniquely different way.

_**xxxviii. Sojourn**_

It was never his intention to die on Dagobah; he only meant to stay there until the time came to face Sidious again, but Luke, the Empire, the Rebellion, even he himself waited too long.

_**xxxix. Share**_

He has such limited time in which to prepare the boy; not nearly enough to pass down all the teachings and secrets of the Old Order.

_**xl. Solitary**_

Even in exile, he knows that he is not alone; the Force will not abandon him.

_**xli. Nowhere**_

Nowhere in the galaxy is there a planet home to as many diverse species as Coruscant, yet nowhere on Coruscant is there another like him.

_**xlii. Neutral**_

Sometimes he wondered how Sidious could have played both sides of the war so easily; even he had too strong an attachment to the Republic to have remained totally unbiased as a Jedi should have.

_**xliii. Nuance**_

In theory, the Empire is not governed all that differently from the Jedi -- a senate like a Council, an Emperor like a Grand Master -- but the subtle differences in practice are what make all the difference.

_**xliv. Near**_

In the distance there is the steady thrum and glow of battle, but here, from his vantage point aboard the _Dauntless_, he can see each man and droid as though they stood directly in front of him, and he can direct the movements of the troops with meditation and a touch of the Force.

_**xlv. Natural**_

The natural progression of age is what will bring him to becoming one with the Force, and although he accepted this knowledge long ago, he can't help but think sometimes that he would have preferred to die in battle.

_**xlvi. Horizon**_

The way in which he feels the Force is limited by it's vast scope; he can sense dozens of distant futures, but cannot tell how the next moment's actions will effect the balance of any one happening over another.

_**xlvii. Valiant**_

The emerald blade blazes in his hand; now the clones will fight for their lives as much as he will fight for his.

_**xlviii. Virtuous**_

He chooses not to blame Kenobi for not noticing Anakin's fall; even he was blind to the subtle darkness hidden under Skywalker's good intentions.

_**xlix. Victory**_

His last thought is that if the boy can truly become a Jedi, then he becomes more than just himself, just Luke Skywalker, son of Anakin, and his triumph over Sidious will be a victory not just for the Rebellion, but for all those who had ever been trained by the old Order, and all those that will be trained by the new--

_**l. Defeat**_

_--_Because the Jedi Order must continue; he knows that the defeat of Sidious can not be the defeat of the Sith, just as the duel in the Senate all those years ago could never have been the defeat of the Jedi.


End file.
